But even with these local and national disappointments, there was a sustained hopefulness in Miss McLendon. During monthly convocations, the fifty-nine students and Mr. Maxwell would crowd into one room, and Miss McLendon would talk about her responsibility to the race. She’d remind the students that though she’d attended Spelman College, a renowned school for the education of Negro women, there had been only three professions open to her: nurse, social worker, or teacher. Of course, Miss McLendon could have set her sights on lawyer or doctor, but those professions were difficult enough to pursue for Negro men, and Miss McLendon knew she didn’t have the strength to chase those dreams. （Here, Miss McLendon would smile in a modest fashion.） That was how she settled on becoming a schoolteacher, and God had continued to bless her, elevating her to the level of principal. She didn’t seem disappointed that her educational kingdom was a two-room church with a potbellied stove for warmth in the winter.
Miss McLendon’s prize student was Belle Driskell, and she focused her attention on the girl, telling her how smart she was. That Belle had the intelligence to become a schoolteacher as well—even a principal. And Miss McLendon threw broad hints that she needed someone to teach in her place, once she retired. As a girl who’d grown up in Chicasetta, Belle knew the people and they knew her. Surely, Mr. Lonny Maxwell would take over as principal at Red Mound School, but Belle could be his second in command. They could do great things together, and Belle shined under Miss McLendon’s attention. Belle was not only flattered, she was relieved that her life’s work was decided for her, and that this work would not be like her mother’s, the country wife of a farmer.
In her junior year of high school, Belle informed her mother that she intended to apply to Miss McLendon’s alma mater, Spelman College, which was eighty-five miles away in Atlanta. Belle had not thought this choice would be a problem, as Miss Rose had known her daughter wanted to be a teacher for five years. Miss McLendon had discussed Belle’s future with the lady. The principal had been to dinner at the Driskell household several times; always Miss Rose would send her off with a big plate of leftovers at the end of the evening.
Belle named her choice of college as she and her mother were sitting on the porch, snapping field peas. Her mother kept her eyes on her bowl of peas, as she told Belle, wasn’t no way she was gone let her only girl go to Atlanta. It was over a three-hour drive from Chicasetta in Hosea Driskell’s pickup.
“But Miss Rose—”
“—and why you gotta go to college anyway? You gone be done with high school next year. That’s more than enough. Back in the day, all my teachers needed was eighth grade.”
Belle would have been ready to fight somebody if they had called her mother ignorant, but that’s exactly how she sounded right now. “Things are different these days.”
“Well, I need you here.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I said so. Unless you the mama now.”
“But Miss Rose—”
“What I say? Go on and snap them peas. Supper in two hours.”
The mother’s fingers kept working, and it would be many years before she told her daughter that her heart had been thumping fast. Belle was her last child, and her second favorite. Her first favorite, Roscoe, had a birthday coming up, but he was serving twenty years on the chain gang for murdering another Negro man. All Miss Rose could thank God for is that Roscoe hadn’t killed anybody white. Otherwise, he would have been smoke and meat in the state’s electric chair. But that sentence might as well have been a lifetime, because Roscoe wouldn’t let anyone in his family visit. He was too ashamed, and he’d sent Miss Rose away the seven times she’d tried to see him.
That year had been strange, unsettling. The season of peace that Chicasetta had experienced had broken: Tommy Pinchard Jr. had died. He’d been the last legitimate male heir of Wood Place, and the only stopgap to the Franklins’ troublemaking. Since his death, they had grown bolder. Cordelia, Tommy’s daughter, had neither the backbone nor the inclination to rein in the Franklin clan, and violence had erupted. Though the Franklins hadn’t claimed credit for the incident, a young Negro man in town had been found dead, hanging from a tree on the land that the Franklins rented on Wood Place. The Franklins weren’t afraid of Cordelia. She had a husband, though, and after the dead Negro’s funeral, he drove out to Wood Place and informed the Franklins, that was it. They needed to find another place to live, and though the Franklins stayed in Chicasetta, the clan scattered, renting pieces of land in the possession of other rich landowners who weren’t bothered by their violence toward Negroes. And so another Negro who lived in Crow’s Roost had been beaten to within an inch of his life after failing to step off the sidewalk for Jinx Franklin, who was almost an old man. But instead of his benevolence emerging, Jinx’s brutality had ripened with the years. His sons and younger brothers were equally mean. They had been known to corner Negro girls and women on country roads, gang-rape them, strip them naked, and leave them to be discovered.